Over the Edge Read online

  The full time had another six hours to run.

  More than enough time for Lad-nar to get hungry.

  He ran the whole thing through his mind, sifting the facts, gauging the information, calculating the outcome. It didn’t look good.

  He knew more about Lad-nar than the beast could have told him, though. That was a factor in his favor. He knew about its religion, its taboos, its—and here he felt his throat dry out again—eating habits, its level of intelligence and culture. The beast had thought it, thought it all, and Kettridge had received it all.

  Not quite what you signed up for, is it, Ben? he thought. Startled first at the muddiness of his own mental speech, he answered himself wearily, No, not at all. Kettridge wondered what Lad-nar would think were he to tell the Blestonian he wasn’t the blue-plate special, but a washed-out, run-down representative of a civilization that didn’t give one hoot in Hell about Lad-nar or his religion. That didn’t care if his race died away.

  He’ll probably chew me up and swallow me, thought Kettridge. Then he added, which is exactly what he’ll do anyhow.

  It seemed so strange. Two days ago he had been aboard the Jeremy Bentham, study-ship one year out of CapCity, and here he was today, main course at a Belstonian aborigine’s feast.

  It wouldn’t come because Kettridge was old, and tired, and he knew how right it was that he die here, in this way. It was a fit end. It was somehow right in a Greater Scheme of Things. Lad-nar was doing all he knew. He was protecting himself. He was surviving.

  Which is more than you’ve been doing for the last ten years, Ben, he told himself. Benjamin Kettridge had long ago stopped surviving. He knew it as clearly as he knew he would die here on this hot and steaming world far from the sight of Earth. I’m glad I’m dying out of sight of that sun.

  Think about it, Ben. Think it over. Now that it’s all finished and you tumble out of things at fifty-six years of age. Think about it. Think about the waste, and the crying, and the bit of conviction that could have saved you. Think about it all.

  Then the story unfurled on a floating banner. It rolled out for Ben Kettridge there in a twilight universe. In a matter of a few minutes he had found life in that shadowy mind-world preferable to his outside existence.

  He saw himself as a prominent scientist, engaged with others of his kind on a project of consequence to mankind. He saw his own worry and nagging anxiousness at the danger in the experiment.

  He heard again the talk with Fenimore. He heard it more clearly than the blast and rush of the thunder outside.

  “Charles, I don’t think we should do it this way. If something were to happen…”

  “Ben, you old bug, you! Nothing whatever can possibly happen—except what we want to happen. The Compound is as safe as breastmilk, and you know it. There’s no reason why everyone should know about it before we use it, though. That damned government has a way of pooh-poohing every major development, corrupting it, putting it off, worrying over it.

  “First we demonstrate its applicability—then we let the dunderheads scream about it. After they know its worth, they’ll build monuments to us!”

  “But don’t you understand, Fenimore? There are too many random factors in the formulae. There’s a fundamental flaw in there—if I could only—figure it out.”

  “Get this, Ben. I don’t mean to pull seniority on you, but you force me. I’m not a harsh man, but this is a dream I’ve had for twenty years, and no piddling penscratching on your part is going to put it off. We test the Compound Thursday!”

  It had been a dream for Fenimore. A dream that had overnight turned into a nightmare of twenty-five thousand dead, and hospitals stacked eight deep with screaming, intestine-twisted patients, howling for death rather than the suffering.

  The nightmare had reached out clammy, thready tentacles and dragged in Kettridge, too. In a matter of days a reputation built of years of privation and sweat was reduced to rubble. Kettridge had barely escaped the mass lynchings. But he did not escape the inquests. What little reputation he had left had saved him—and a few others—from the gas chambers. But Life…

  Life was at an end for him.

  Ten years of struggling to eat, to barely keep alive, for no one would hire one of the men who had caused the Mass Death, had sunk Kettridge lower and lower. There was still a common decency about him that prevented a slump into some gutter, just as there was an inner desire to continue living. Even Life as it was to him then. Kettridge never became—as the others who escaped—a flop-house rummy or a suicide. He just became anonymous.

  Lower and lower. Till there was nothing lower except slashed wrists or the bottle.

  Kettridge had been too old, by then, for either.

  And always there had been the knowledge that he could have stopped the project, had he voiced his doubts, instead of brooding in silence.

  Finally the study-ship post had come. Ben Kettridge, with another name, had signed on. Three years, out to the stars, the cramp and squalor of shipboard, studying and cataloging. It hadn’t been good, but it was a way to keep going.

  Besides, how could he face the sun of Earth many more days—with that on his conscience?

  So Ben Kettridge had become an alien ecologist. One year out from CapCity, and this!

  He wanted to scream. He wanted to scream very badly. His throat muscles drew up and tightened inside the wrinkled throat. His mouth, inside the flexible hood, opened wide, till the corners stretched in pain.

  The pictures had stopped. He had withdrawn in terror from the shadowed mind-world, and he was back in a stone prison with a hungry aborigine for keeper.

  His mind was a shrieking torrent of horror and futility and self hatred. It was all a vortex, drawing his brain down into a black chasm. Oh, if he could only scream!

  Lad-nar stirred.

  The huge furred body twisted, snorted softly, and sank back into sleep. Kettridge wondered momentarily if the strength of his thoughts had disturbed the beast.

  What a fantastic creature, thought Kettridge. He lives on a world where the heat will fry a human, and shivers in fear at lightning storms.

  A strange compassion came over Kettridge. How very much like a native of Earth this creature was. Governed by its stomach and a will to survive. A religion founded in fear and nurtured on terror. Lightning: the beast thought of it as a Screamer From The Skies. The occasionally-glimpsed sun: The Great Warmer.

  Kettridge pondered on the simplicity and common sense of Lad-nar’s religion.

  When the storms gathered, finally building up enough charge to begin the lightning and thunder, Lad-nar knew the cold would set in. Cold was anathema to him. He knew the cold sapped him of strength, the Lightning struck him down. So he stole a cat-litter and hid for the weeks it would take the gigantic storms to abate. The high body heat of the creature dictated that it have much food to keep it alive when the temperature went down. When a cat-litter wasn’t handy, why then just kill and eat an alien ecologist. Kettridge found the last thought standing out in his mind.

  This was no stupid beast, Kettridge reminded himself.

  His religion was a sound combination of animal wisdom and native observation. The lightning killed: don’t go abroad in the storms. The storms brought cold: get food and stay alive.

  It was so simple to analyze the situation. Simple, yes, but impossible to get himself out of it!

  Not that I care, Kettridge mused.

  I stopped caring long ago. The urge to survive? He laughed aloud. To his mind came the picture of himself. Thin, weary looking. As though a world of agony had seeped like sand into his bones. His face was a lined and broken thing. It was tired. From the gray hair to the cleft chin. From the broken bridge of the aquiline nose to the thinned, parched lips. I’m older than fifty-six, he thought. There were men of fifty-six, he knew, who were still following the trails of the young.

  I’m too sorry for myself.

  It seemed strange. He had never churned these thoughts around in just this manner
before. He had been prepared, almost eager, to let himself be beaten down, to be trampled under feet of sadness and self-pity. He was waiting for the creature to waken, then it would be at an end…

  It was indeed strange how an odd situation could bring a man to a realization of himself.

  Here is a chance, he thought. The words came unbidden.

  In just those words. Here is a chance. Here was a chance not only to survive—something he had long since stopped doing consciously—but a chance to reinstate himself. If only in his own mind. Here was an aborigine, member of a dying race, a cowering beast of the caves, afraid to walk in the storms, in fear of the lightning, shackled by a primitive religion. Doomed forever to the land, never to see the sky.

  In that split moment Ben Kettridge devised a plan to save his soul.

  There are times when men sum up their lives. Take account and find themselves wanting. This was one of those times. So hopeless did it seem, that Ben Kettridge told himself, This is a chance.

  Lad-nar suddenly became a symbol of all the people who had been lost in the Mass Death. In the mind of an old and tired man, many things are possible.

  I must get out of here! Ben Kettridge told himself, over and over, almost as an incantation.

  The old man slid up flat against the wall. His back was strained with the effort to sink into the stone. Watching the Blestonian come to wakefulness was almost the epitome of horror.

  The huge body tossed and heaved, then rose. Directly. It sat erect from the thin, pinched waist, raising the massive wedge-shaped chest, the hideous head, the powerful neck and arms. A thick trickle of sleep-spittle dripped from a corner of its fanged mouth. It sat up and

  Thought: Lad-nar hungers.

  “Oh, God in Heaven, please let me have time! Please allow me this—this—little thing! I beg you!”

  Kettridge found himself with hands clasped on his chest, face raised to the roof of the cave. For the first time in his life he felt tears of appeal on his cheeks.

  He spoke to God with the tongue of a man who has never known a God. Science had been his deity—and that God had turned against him. He spoke from a heart so long full of misery and wandering it never knew it could speak to a God.

  Thought: you speak to the Lord of Heaven. Lad-nar seemed awed. It watched, its huge brilliant eyes suddenly unslitted and wide.

  Kettridge thought at the beast.

  Lad-nar! I come from the Lord of the Heaven. I am a Lord greater than the Lord of the Heaven! I can show you how to walk in the storms! I can show you how to—

  The creature’s roar deafened Kettridge. Along with it came the mental scream! The old man felt himself lifted off the floor by the force of that blow to the mind, and hurled against the rocks. His body burned and ached from the pounding, but he knew it had been his own reflexes that had done it.

  The aborigine leaped to his feet, threw his taloned hands upward and bellowed his rage.

  Thought: you speak that which is forbidden! You say that which is untrue and unclean! No one walks when the Essence-Stealer speaks in the night! You are a fearful thing! Lad-nar is afraid!

  “Heresy, I’ve spoken heresy!” Kettridge wanted to rip off the metal-plastic hood and tear his tongue from his own mouth. This was the way he had begun his own salvation. Heresy!

  Thought: yes, you have spoken that which is unclean and untrue!

  Kettridge cowered in fear. The beast was enraged. How could it be afraid, when it stood there so powerful and so massive?

  Thought: yes, Lad-nar is afraid! Afraid!

  Then the waves of fear hit him. Kettridge felt his head begin to throb. The tender fiber of his mind was being twisted and seared and buffeted. Washed and burned and scarred forever with the terrible all-consuming fear the animal had coursing through itself.

  Stop, stop, Lad-nar! I speak truth! I speak truth!

  He spoke, then. Softly, winningly, trying to convince a being that had never known any God but one that howled and slashed in streamers of electricity. He spoke of himself. He spoke of his powers. He spoke of them as though he believed he had them. To himself he thought the things he was saying. He built himself a glory on two levels.

  Slowly Lad-nar calmed, and the waves of fear diminished to ripples. The awe and trembling remained, but there was a sliver of belief.

  Kettridge knew he must work on that.

  All too easily, down somewhere in his own mind, came back the picture of that huge creature, ripping and eating, ripping and eating…

  “I come from the Heaven-Home, Lad-nar. I speak in the words of a God, for I am a God. A stronger God than the puny Essence-Stealer you fear!” As if to punctuate his words, a flash of lightning struck just outside the cave, filling the hollow with fury and light.

  Kettridge continued, spilling the words faster and faster. “I can walk abroad in the storm, and the Essence-Stealer will not harm me. Let me go out and I will show you, Lad-nar.” He was playing a dangerous hand; at any moment the beast might leap. It might dare to venture that leap hoping Kettridge was speaking falsely, rather than incur the wrath of a God he knew was dangerous.

  Kettridge continued talking.

  “Let me out, Lad-nar. Let me walk from this cave. I will show you.” He edged toward the cave’s mouth, his hands in their metal-plastic gloves flat to the wall.

  He knew the insulated suit would protect him from the viciousness outside.

  Thought: stop!

  “Why, Lad-nar? I can show you. I can show you how to walk in the night, when the Essence-Stealer screams, and you can scream back at him, and laugh at him, Lad-nar.” He didn’t know why he was talking, he could have thought it just as well, but there was a reassurance in his voice’s sound in the cave.

  The old man felt the weariness seeping through his body. Oh, if I were a younger man. If it weren’t so late.

  Thought: Lad-nar does not know what less age means, but why should I let you go? You may have been sent by the Lord of the Heaven to see if I should lose my essence. The Lord of the Heaven may be trying to take you back from me because I listened to your unclean and untrue sayings. Then I will have no feastings! Then I will lose my essence!

  Kettridge reminded himself that the beast was indeed clever. Not only did it fear the wrath of the Lord of the Heaven and his screaming death, but Lad-nar knew if he let the man go he would have nothing to eat during the coming cold days.

  “Let me go, Lad-nar. I will bring you back a cat-litter for your feastings. I will show you that I can walk in the night and I will bring you food. I will bring back a cat-litter, Lad-nar!” He prayed, silently, it would work.

  Thought: if you are a God, why do you speak to the Lord of the Heaven?

  He stopped thinking. He blocked it off. He willed himself to stop thinking. He must let his instincts answer for him.

  “Because I want the Lord of the Heaven to know that I am as great as he, and not afraid of him, and that my prayers to him are only to show that I am as great as he.” It was gibberish, but it was a deep gibberish, and if he kept talking, the beast would shuck off the thoughts rather than try to fathom them.

  The Earthman knew he had one factor in his favor: Lad-nar had never heard anyone speak against the Gods, and so one who did it and did not get blasted must be a God.

  Kettridge hit him with the appeal again, before the animal had time to wonder.

  “I’ll get you a cat-litter, Lad-nar. Let me go! Let me go! Let me show you! Let me show you that you can walk in the storms as I do! I, too, am a great God!” There was so much at stake here, so little time, so deep a Hell waiting.

  Thought: you will go away.

  There was a petulance, a little child sound, to the objection, and Kettridge knew the first step had been achieved.

  “No, Lad-nar. Here is a rope.” He drew a thin cord of tough metal-plastic from his utility belt. His hand jiggled against the service revolver there and he laughed deep inside once more as he thought of how useless it was.

  Useless.

>   Only in his wits was there salvation.

  He would not have used the gun in any case. There was more at stake here than just his life.

  “Here is a rope,” he repeated, extending the coiled cord. “I will tie it about myself, like this…and…now! You take this end. Hold it tightly so that I can’t escape. It is long enough so that I may go out and seek a cat-litter, and show you I can walk abroad.”

  At first the native refused, eyeing the glistening, silvery cord with fear in his deeply-pooled eyes. But Kettridge spoke on two levels, and spoke, and spoke, and soon the beast touched the cord.

  It drew back its seven-taloned hand quickly.

  The third time it grasped the cord.

  You have just lost your religion, Kettridge thought.

  Lad-nar had “smelled” with his mind. He had sensed a cat-litter fairly close to the cave. But he did not know where.

  Kettridge stepped out of the dark mouth of the cave, into the roaring maelstrom of a Blestonian electrical storm.

  The sky was a tumult of heavy black clouds, steel and ebony and ripped dirty cloth. The clouds tumbled over themselves and died split apart as a bolt crashed through. The very air was charged, and blast after blast of lightning sheared away the atmosphere in zig-zagged streamers.

  Kettridge stood with legs apart, body tilted forward against the pull of the cord, hands shading his eyes against the glare, the almost continuous glare, of lightning eruptions.

  He was a small, thin man, and had it not been for the cord, he might easily have been swept away by the winds and rain that sandpapered the rocky ledge.

  Streamers, branches, forks—the illumination of the arcing bolts was something magnificent and terrible. The old man stood there with the pelting rain washing over him, obscuring his vision through the hood, leaving only the glare of the storm for him.

  He took a step, two, three.

  The bolt slashed at him through a rift in the mountains. It roared over the precipice and streaked at him. It materialized out of nowhere and everywhere, erupting the stones at his feet. The rock flew up in planed, smoothed slivers, shooting in every direction. Kettridge fell flat and the crack of thunder rolled in on him. He realized it had come with the lightning, that he had been listening to it for almost a minute, before he realized what it was.